I am an award-winning journalist and a New York Times best selling author. My latest book is Newton's Football: The Science Behind America's Game, published by Ballantine in November 2013. My other books include The Billion Dollar Game: Behind the Scenes at the Super Bowl and Clapton's Guitar: Watching Wayne Henderson Build the Perfect Instrument. For five years I wrote the By the Numbers sports analytics column for the Wall Street Journal. I have written about sports, music, entertainment, pop culture and politics for a wide variety of national publications including The New York Times Magazine, Salon, Rolling Stone, Men's Journal, The Daily Beast, The Washington Post and The Village Voice. I'm a graduate of The University of Chicago and I live in Montclair N.J. with my wife, two kids, and my golden retriever, Tessie.
Follow me on Twitter @allenstjohn

Westminster, "Show Dog," and the Battle Over Purebred Puppies

It’s Westminster Week at Madison Square Garden, the time when Jeremy Lin cedes the floor to Pekingese, Syke Terriers, and Flat-Coated Retrievers, all battling for Best in Show. The Westminster Kennel Club dog show is America’s chance to celebrate the purebred dog, to talk knowingly about pedigrees and conformation. This year, there’s a little extra buzz, with Martha Stewart’s Chow Chow winning Best of Breed, and Josh Dean’s newly released book Show Dogs: The Charmed Life and Trying Times of a Near-Perfect Purebred, which chronicled a year in the life of an Australian Shepherd.

Tessie, my golden retriever

But the rest of the year, the breeding establishment is under fire from those who cite the genetic problems with pure-bred dogs and further argue that it’s irresponsible to continue to breed dogs when so many rescue dogs need homes.

“In New York, the trendiest dog to own is a rescue,” says Dean. “It’s part of an urban, educated, progressive mindset and it’s getting more and more fervent every year.”

Animal advocates don’t mince words on the subject. “Westminster and the dogbreeding industry it props up are directly responsible for the fate of many of the dogs who end up in shelters and euthanized for lack of a home,” writes PETA Foundation staff writer Lindsay Pollard-Post

Putting aside puppy mills—horrible places where pure-bred dogs are bred in massive numbers and under inhumane conditions for sale in pet stores–there are sound counter arguments for getting a pedigreed dog through a responsible breeder of the kind that show at Westminster and smaller shows throughout the country.

“They know the breed so well that they know what the puppies are going to turn out to be: Size, temperament, lifespan, how much they’re going to shed,” explains Dean. “They don’t sugar coat it at all. They’re very honest, because their worst fear is having an owner who’s unhappy. If you go to a pound, you have no idea what you’re going to end up with.”

I’m in unique position to shed some light on this controversy, having lived with wonderful animals at both ends of the spectrum. Here’s a tale of my two dogs: Alison, the brown rescue dog, and Tessie, the pedigreed golden retriever.

Alison: My wife and I had been married a couple of years and we were thinking about taking those scary steps into true adulthood: buying a house and having kids. We were smart, responsible people, but also prone to worry: How can we raise a child if we can’t keep the houseplants alive?

So as a transitional step, we decided to get a dog.

We went to a few adoption events, and decided against a very personable, very large Rottweiler. We finally got serious and headed to a large animal shelter in Newark.

It was exactly the kind of institutional, no-nonsense place you see in the movies, with rows of cages and dogs barking as we walked past.

Post Your Comment

Post Your Reply

Forbes writers have the ability to call out member comments they find particularly interesting. Called-out comments are highlighted across the Forbes network. You'll be notified if your comment is called out.

Comments

Thank you for the balanced article. I’d love to see figures of purebred vs mixed breeds in pounds. Most purebred clubs have rescue organizations that are more than willing to go the extra mile to take the purebred when and if they fall through the crack and end up in a shelter. Good breeders do just what yours did to insure the puppy/dog is a good fit for life and take the dog back if not. Many times shelters won’t turn over purebred dogs to breed rescue, many times HSUS affiliated, so they can make an issue out of this and brainwash with their propaganda those who won’t take the time to educate themselves on what HSUS and PETA is really all about. How about doing an article on that? Those of us who love dogs, all dogs, and animals, are having our rights attacked mercilessly and freedoms taken away, could use some help from the media to tell the truth!

Thanks for your comments and glad you liked the story. This is a hot button issue for animal lovers on all sides of the issue. But one thing that everyone can agree on is the importance of finding good, forever homes for dogs. The day that you get a dog, whether from a breeder or a rescue, is an important one, but it’s only the beginning of a lifelong commitment, and behavioral problems (often coupled with unrealistic expectations on the part of the new owner) are one of the major reasons that dogs end up in shelters.

Amy Glad to hear you liked the piece and thanks so much for the comment. As you well know, the people on both sides of this issue are fervent animal lovers, and they share an intense passion for dogs. I think that the very real problem of homeless and unwanted animals can be solved through relatively simple steps we can all agree on.

Shut down the puppy mills. Educate would-be owners about the responsibility of sharing your life with a dog. A better job of matching dogs with homes And ongoing support to help owners solve behavioral problems, rather than giving up the dog.

I’ve had access to much better training resources with Tessie than with Alison, and that’s one reason why she’s such an easy-going dog.

AGREE! The problem would be solved and there should be no problem with breeding purebred dogs if, along with what’s already listed:

Every breeder breeds to improve the breed and not just to increase its numbers to sell pets. This means no litters are born for the sake of sales/profit or to maintain the cost of the kennel.

Every breeder is responsible by placing the puppies they sell into the right home and TAKING BACK the puppies that dont work out for the owner or approving of the next home for the puppy ANYTIME during the puppies’ lives or otheriwse taking the responsiblity of finding a new home for that dog, even if the breeder’s home needs to be a temporary home for the dog until the right one is found.

SO MANY “breeders” that sell purebred puppies do not take responisiblity for the unessessary number of puppies they have produced and sold as pets. Many even sell with no spay/nueter contract and so they become responsible for all the backyard breeders and the effect snowballs! THESE breeders are the problem, not the reputable breeders like the breeder of Tessie in this article, and these breeders should be shut down too becuase even though they do not sell to pet stores like a large puppy mill, they are still puppy mills as far as I am concerned and they fool potential puppy buyers into thinking that they are reputbale because so many potential puppy buyers are simply not educated about what dog breeding is all about, or what it should be about. I hope to see more people as aware as the pet owners in this article! Afterall, it is the people buying puppies who enable irresponsible breeders and puppy mills. If a breeder was legaly responsible for the dogs they have bred for their entire life then it would be the breeder’s problem and if THEY were responsible for all the dogs that didnt work out for the owners instead of the rescue and shelters and if THEY had to euthanize their own dogs or house and maintain them and re-home them then perhaps they would decide to either practice eithical breeding or not breed dogs!

Rachel Thanks for your thoughtful comments. You’re very right about “backyard breeders” being a problem, albeit not quite as profound as puppy mills. The key is educating consumers to make smart, informed decisions about getting a pet.

Thank you for this article. Your reasoning for getting your Golden is exactly why I got my Samoyed puppy from a responsible breeder, rather than getting a shelter dog.

I do want to address one point that bothers me. Rather then focusing on the breeders (mass producers of puppies, backyard or otherwise), why don’t we focus on the people buying these puppies. If you could convince the public to stop buying from pet stores, the mass producers of puppies would be forced to shut down within a year. If backyard breeders couldn’t sell their litters, they’d stop breeding. It is the market that creates the demand, and as long as there is money is producing those puppies, people will want to meet that demand.

And that is the other issue. If people only want to buy from breeders with high standards for health testing, structure, temperment and socialization, they need to understand (and accept) that they may not be the right fit for that breed. I have turned down more people that inquire about samoyed puppies than I have approved. They see my dogs, often at shows, and don’t understand that the beautiful, fluffy, white, well-behaved dog they see is the product of 100s of hours of training, exercise, grooming and feeding. And they often don’t listen when you try to explain the effort put into the dog.

One bit about the ‘taking the dog back’ clause in most breeders contracts – it is partly about responsibility, but it is also about loving those dogs. It is a powerful thing to raise a litter of puppies and see them open their eyes, take their first steps, learn to wrestle with each other, etc. You spend hours a day with them and get to see their personalities emerge. You love those pups just as much as any of your other dogs, and while you know you cannot keep them all, it hurts to send them to their new homes. Just like you never stop loving a dog that has died, you never stop loving the pups you’ve raised. The bright spot is making another family happy, and breeders cherish those families that keep in contact and send pictures and let us know how the dog is doing.

If you required puppy mills to take back their dogs, the dog would either go back into the breeding cycle or be euthanized. Either way, the mill would still be profitable, so it would have little impact. When the market is gone, the puppy mill and backyard breeders will be too.

again, thank you for the article. I always encourage people to go to a shelter or rescue first for a dog.

Tami Thank you for the insightful comments. You’re right that the way to deal with this problem is on the demand side. If people will pay extra for everything from Apple Computers to organic produce, they can also be convinced to buy their dogs from somewhere beside a pet store.

Yes, shutting down the puppy mills would eliminate the backyard breeders. Shutting down puppy mills is the solution. To prevent future problems every breeder must be responsible for every puppy they have brought into the world so long as it is alive. This should make up for the people who are not as educated or informed or sure/commited as they should be.